It’s safe to say that I’m infatuated with cupcakes.  For the last couple of weeks I’ve been searching out fun cupcake recipes, reading cupcake blogs (did you know there was such a thing?), and wishing I had all the necessary ingredients to actually make some of these fantastic little desserts.

These didn’t start out as cheesecake cupcakes – they were just ordinary (low-cholesterol!) chocolate cupcakes.  Halfway through the process though, I decided that a) I didn’t want to wait for them to cool before icing, and then eating them, and b) not having much powdered sugar OR cocoa powder, maybe icing them just wasn’t such a good idea anyway.  This is a hybrid of a couple of recipes from friends/relatives that we had at home.

Makes 24:

3 c. all-purpose flour

2 c. sugar

1/2 c. cocoa powder

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 c. water

2/3 c. vegetable or extra light olive oil

2 Tbs. white vinegar

2 tsp. vanilla

Mix all ingredients together and stir until well combined.  Fill lined or greased cupcake pans halfway.  In clean bowl, mix together filling ingredients.

Filling:

8 oz. softened neufchatel or cream cheese

1/3 c. powdered sugar (granulated sugar will work too)

1/8 t. salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 t. vanilla extract

1/2 c. mini chocolate chips

Mix cream cheese, sugar, egg, vanilla and salt together.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Mixture will be a little lumpy.  Drop heaping teaspoonfuls over the chocolate cupcake batter.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes. Let cupcakes cool slightly before removing from pan.